The Search Engine Blog
News and Tips From The Search Marketing World
On Page SEO Dead? Long Live Relevance!
There have been a number of posts lately about a trend we’ve already seen as well. On page changes such as H1 tags, bolding text, rearranging content, etc are having little impact on ranking. One example is this forum post. It illustrates what we’ve been touting for years. Provide quality content, have links from related sites, link to related sites, and get connected through social networks.
On page content is important for Google to learn what you are about so it isn’t dead, but they are obviously paying a lot of attention to effective link building and what is being said about your site.
SWI and Returns Policy
Shopping While Intoxicated (SWI) is reported to be on the rise. If you sell online, now is a good time to review your return policy.
+1 Button Does More
Two new features for the +1 button make it a time saver for sharing. Just click the +1 on any site (including your own) and it allows you to instantly post it, sharing it with your circles of friends. A snippet feature is also added showing content from the page. Web masters can control what shows in their snippets. More on the Google Blog page http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/doing-more-with-1-button-more-than-4.html.
Why Bother Blogging On SEO
I got a chuckle out of a post at http://www.johnon.com/762/bloggin-on-seo.html and had to respond. We’ll see if it’s approved. I’m not certain if John Andrews is being a bit sarcastic or just really frustrated with stupidity. I do think that people need to think about what they are reading online and think about it prior to acting on it. Working in search marketing, I’ve heard some wild questions where it is obvious that the person asking just read something and swallowed it whole without chewing. These are most likely the same people who believe that someone in Madagascar is going to share twenty million dollars with them.
Hot Tracking
Watching how users interact with your site can lead to improve site design which leads to increased sales. You can see how users interact with your site using a tool such as Mouseflow. We’ve been using it on a number of ecommerce sites and have learned things we never would have been able to learn without a lot of guess work. Check out the Mouseflow free trial.
What Site Was Blocked the Most?
OpenDNS is used by 1% of the Wordwide Internet users. That’s over 30 billion DNS queries in just one day. Guess which site is blocked most frequently on their service? If you guessed Facebook, pat yourself on the back. Facebook is blocked by both home and business users so often that it has earned the number one spot in both overall users and business only. It is also in the top ten for whitelisted sites for all users so go figure. Also on the blocked list are other popular like MySpace and YouTube. The point is, if you are only doing social marketing on the popular sites and are ignoring blogging, forums and newsgroups, you may not be reaching your audience. View the report at http://www.opendns.com/pdf/opendns-report-2010.pdf.
Manage Multiple Social Streams
Sendible lets you manage multiple social streams. Cool new feature! Check it out at Sendible.
Great WordPress Plugins
Yoast has posted his favorite WordPress plugins at http://yoast.com/top-wordpress-plugins/. Great list that I could add to with the following items:
- WP-Piwik instead of Google Analytics
- Contact-form-7
- Social Profiles Widget
- RSS Includes Pages
- AWeber Integration and AWeber Registration Integration (see link to the right)
- HTML Javascript Adder
Remove Robots.txt and Get Lost
In a post on Google’s Webmaster’s Help Forum, a site owner posted questions about their lengthy robots.txt file. The conversation goes on for a while and finally a Google employee recommended that they remove their robots.txt file? Why? It is rather silly having a robots.txt file when properly developed sites tell any robot how to index the site, but is it wise to remove it? I’d say no just because of the errors you’ll generate. I personally think Google gave this advice to this person because they were making a mountain out of a molehill. Get all that junk out of your robots.txt file and focus on a properly configured server and improved web site. Read more at Search Engine Rountable.
He Did It – Blaming the Web Designer
There’s a great write up on SE Roundtable about duplicate content on a site created by a web designer. It’s a good case in point of selecting a designer carefully and not being afraid to spend a bit more for a professional. The final point that the site should be in a staged area is an excellent moral to the story. A site should be at least flagged as noindex until they are approved by the customer. Read more here.
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